E-commerce has dramatically reshaped the terrain of the retail business in the past decade. While many organized retail firms have taken their business online in the past few years, many legacy retail businesses have struggled to upgrade to a digital storefront, which has caused them to miss out on the convenience seeking and digital-savvy consumers. In these pandemic times, footfalls have significantly reduced in the stores due to safety reasons and the only way to serve consumers and continue business is to go online. Thankfully, there are a few platforms that are helping such businesses digitize themselves in no time.
Rodeo is an online platform that empowers retailers through technology and enables them to create a thriving e-commerce business in no time. Throughout its journey, the organization has helped several businesses reinvent themselves and rediscover their customer base by setting up their digital armada.
In Conversation with Mr. Gopi V., CEO of Rodeo Digital
We are fortunate to have interviewed Mr. Gopi V., the CEO of Rodeo Digital, and know about his journey so far.
Here’s an excerpt from the interview:
Heartiest welcome from the SoftwareSuggest team. Our readers want to know about you & how did Rodeo start?
I had been obsessed with technology from childhood, and later on, it turned into a zeal for products and solutions to solve the right problems in the market. My 18 years of career at Honeywell (till mid-2018) gave me an opportunity to contribute to both software R&D and Product Marketing with greater exposure to global markets and businesses.
By 2018, I was closely following the digitization in the retail space headed by large tech players in the Indian market. These e-commerce companies were letting shoppers discover catalogues & products easily, making products accessible and buyable with a personalized experience. Shoppers were enthusiastically adopting this online shopping through mobile and web apps provided by these e-commerce companies.
The Brick and Mortar stores, especially in the food and grocery space, were looking to adopt similar technology – Rodeo was started to fulfil this purpose.
What was the idea or impetus behind creating Rodeo Digital?
The Organized Retail stores (having computerized billing and some level of IT automation) in the food and grocery space do have a significant customer base in their locality of service. Formats like Supermarkets, Hypermarkets, Organic stores, Branded meat stores, Dry fruits, and many fall under this segment of Organized Retail.
Given the swift competition they were facing from the e-commerce players and changing consumer behaviours on shopping, these retailers were looking for a tech that would help them have a digital storefront on their brand and offer a digital experience to their consumers.
Consumers were largely dependent on their daily and monthly needs on these hyper-local stores for groceries, vegetables, and their quick delivery.
Rodeo wanted to offer an online platform to solve this problem so that they offer the digital experience to their consumers and keep them relevant and competitive in the evolving digital world. Rodeo has created an Industry agnostic cloud platform, currently targeting the Organized Retail segment of the “Food and Grocery” category.
What differentiates Rodeo Digital from its competitors?
Rodeo’s architecture is based on the “Composable Commerce” concept where the architecture is capable of giving an e-commerce solution to any industry by adopting their business-specific workflows and logics.
Rodeo targets the “Organized Retail” segment of the Food & Grocery category currently. Rodeo is capable of making a store online in a day’s time with unlimited SKUs by providing a catalogue, integrations to the store’s ERP, integration to 3P delivery, and a lot more.
How has your sales & marketing strategy evolved during the shift from normal to new-normal?
Our sales have significantly increased during the pandemic, given the need for an online storefront is understood by the majority of businesses in the market. We didn’t market ourselves to a broader audience; rather, we made ourselves visible on the avenues to audiences who were looking for such solutions. Subscribing to your services, Software Suggest, was one of them.
What was the one realization or learning during your journey that helped you grow in this field?
Be close to your customers, have a serious interest in their success with your offering, and let them take care of your growth.
What would you credit as a secret behind your success in achieving brand credibility in this swift transitioning IT services industry?
We wanted to be a brand trusted by our customers. We wanted them to be successful. We are trying to do our best to accomplish the same and we are confident about it.
Would you like to share some interesting stats/ numbers for our readers — pre-pandemic versus current times?
Comparing a few stats between the last month of pre-pandemic quarter and pandemic quarter.
- No of downloads per store increased by 528%
- No of orders per store increased by 396%
- Store sales increased by 351%
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